Longtime GOP operative and Donald Trump confidant Roger Stone was caught on tape detailing the steps that Republicans are taking in order to successfully challenge the 2024 election result should the former president lose to President Joe Biden again.
This time around, Trump’s team is more prepared than they were four years ago and are already on an “offensive footing” with “lawyers, judges, technology,” Stone said in the “undercover recording” obtained by journalist Lauren Windsor. The audio was recorded at a Catholics Prayer for Trump event on March 19 at Mar-a-Lago, where Stone was the keynote speaker.
The audio, provided exclusively to Rolling Stone and published Tuesday, includes conversations between Windsor and Stone, and between Windsor’s colleague, Ally Sammarco, and Stone.
Stone perpetuated Trump’s 2020 election lie to the women when he claimed the presidential election could “be stolen again” and that he wasn’t currently “totally confident” about how the vote would actually play out.
Asked what would prevent voter fraud, Stone replied: “In some states, it’ll be easier to stop. In other places, it won’t. But at least this time when they do it, you have a lawyer and a judge, his home phone number standing by so you can stop it.”
“We made no preparations last time, none,” he admitted, appearing to reference the tossing of dozens of lawsuits that falsely alleged the 2020 election was stolen.
Sammarco claimed to Stone that she was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — when Trump supporters rioted at the incitement of the then-president as he desperately sought to hang onto power — and was “prepared” to return.
Stone responded: “That may not be necessary. There are technical, legal steps that we have to take to try to have a more honest election. We’re not there yet, but there are things that can be done.”
He highlighted the “changes in state law,” and “real-time voter list monitoring, going to court as we just did to challenge some of the vote laws.”
“We should be suing in half a dozen places,” he added, later suggesting the Republican National Committee would now spend “far more” money on fighting for Trump since the former president’s installation of his daughter-in-law Lara Trump as co-chair.
This is not the first time Stone touts information about Trump. Last year, he was caught on camera boasting about manipulating Trump for years. “I have a 40-year record of being able to convince the big man to do what’s in his best interest,” Stone said while filming for Danish filmmaker Christoffer Guldbrandsen’s documentary, “A Storm Foretold.”
Trump, in the final days of his presidency, pardoned Stone of his 40-month prison sentence for witness tampering and lying to Congress.
Also in 2023, a video emerged of Stone appearing to hatch the plot to overturn Biden’s victory in the aftermath of Trump’s loss.
When reached for comment from Rolling Stone, Stone downplayed his secretly recorded statements: “All of the election integrity provisions that I suggested are perfectly legal and should be part of any ballot Security effort.”
